OPIUM NOT ABOLISHED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18141, 12 January 1921, Page 8

OPIUM NOT ABOLISHED

TRAFFIC IN CHINA. When the importation of opium to China was abolished many words of congratulation were spoken, but, according to ivlr J. O. P. Bland, who writes in the National Review, on “Peking Revisited,” the “prohibition” has not been effective:— There are many curious features about the opium traffic in China to-day, from Canton to Kirin, but none more curious than the brisk business in the drug openly conducted at the capital, not by the opium shops (for these were suppressed long ago to the sound of moral drums and virtuous trumpets), but by officials, civil and military. As 1 ventured to predict in 1912, to, the great scandal of all true believers, the "opium abolition” movement has put an omi to tiie bona tide importation of the Indian drug and checked the transit trade in all its former channels, merely to divert it into new ways, more directly profitable to tfie mandarin. You could buy as much, native opium, as you wished in Peking last winter for 7dol. an dunce, and Indian opium at 12d01., and it was commonly reported in the city that the bulk ot the supply came from Moukden, brought in by the soldier emissaries of the great Tuohun, Chang Tso-lin, and regularly controlled from his local offices. Calling one day at a *‘curio” shop in the Soochow hutung to ask after the proprietor, an old friend of former days, I learned that he had died the year before, and from his eldest son I gathered that excessive opium-smoking, after seven years of abstinence, was chiefly responsible for his death. 1 also learned that the antiopium movement had become to all xqteuts and purposes a dead letter. When 1 inquired how the father had been able to procure the drug, his son replied that anyone who liad the money could purchase it from the officials at any time. It came uom the north (k’ou wai) ,he said, brought over the border by Russians and Japanese, most of the drug being grown in Manchuria and Kansuh. Later on, at Moukden, I saw something of the machinery of i tus I traffic in working—a dozen evil-look-ing Russian womeri of the Polish Jew type, breakfasting at the Yamoto Hotel, on their way through from Harbin to Dalny, opium and morphia smugglers all. And Japan’s "self-determined” parcel post is another important factor in tho situation. Disregarding tho fact that opium is grown m most parts of the country with the obvious connivance of officials, and that the trade is conducted at many centres under official auspices, a section ot y oung China’s mandarins has recently drawn" the usual red herring across the opium trail and endeavoured to make the corrupt traffic servo tho purposes of its campaign lor tho abolition of extra-territoriality. In former days, when its first object was to get rid of tho competition of the Indian opium trade, Young China and the foreign anti-opium societies used to declare that China could and would abolish opium completely, —when once the Indian importation stopped. Thanks chiefly to tho fervent propaganda of the sentimentalists and “upli’ters” in England and America, the Indian trade was abolished, and forthwith opium-growing and smuggling became one of the mandarins’ most lucrative sources of income. The fact is notorious and undeniable : at missionary meetings to-day it is either passed over in sad silence or treated as a lamentable case of backsliding. But the section bf Young China to which I refer sees nothing lamentable in the situation. On the contrary, it is now urging Ihe sentimentalists and upliftors to believe and to preach that the opium traffic will bo finally abolished if once the foreigners’ rights of extra-territoriality are given up; and already there are indications of a widespread propaganda developing along these lines.